Home Rush Two 2020 Views: Conrad Black vs. Doug Schoen
Two 2020 Views: Conrad Black vs. Doug Schoen
RUSH: I have some stuff left over from yesterday that I didn't have a chance to get into — and there's, of course, new stuff today. I have two contrasting pieces, one by Conrad Black, who, as you know, is somebody I deeply admire. He's a Canadian news mogul, a brilliant man who has written several books. Flight of the Eagle is one of his best books about the founding of America, George Washington particularly. But it's not a biography of Washington.
Anyway, he has written a piece for American Greatness, which details the reasons why he thinks Trump's gonna win in the biggest landslide we have seen in recent years. And he makes a good case for it. And then on the other side of it we have Doug Schoen, who is the former Clintonista, Democrat strategist who thinks that as the Democrat field narrows and some of the Looney Tune wackos are removed from the field, that that's bad news for Trump, that the Democrat chances are gonna improve. To summarize, he thinks that the Democrats are gonna look less radical the fewer of them that are in the primary field. He's got other reasoning behind this.
I want to contrast these two as the program unfolds.
RUSH: Now, I think so at the top of the program, we have a couple competing pieces today. It's not by design. It just so happens they happened to have been released within the same cycle, and it's interesting to contrast. First up, Doug Schoen, who now works at Fox News. He's a former Clinton pollster and campaign professional strategist, whatever these people call themselves now. He has a piece, "The Shrinking Field of Democrat Presidential Candidates Is Bad News for Trump, and Here's Why —
"The race for the Democratic nomination for president is getting less crowded, and that's a good thing for the party. In order to defeat President Trump in 2020 Democrats will need to unite around one cohesive narrative and eventually one candidate, and declare a truce in the intraparty feud between progressives and moderates." That ain't gonna happen. The "progressives," the leftists, the radicals, they don't do truces! (chuckling) They don't back off! There aren't any moderates. They want to… By the way, there's a myth going around that there is a gigantic constituency of moderates in the Democrat Party.
There may have been at one time. There isn't any more. That's the point about it! That's the point about what the Democrats have become. There isn't a bunch of moderates, certainly, not a large enough amount of them to make a difference in an election anymore. They're all going radical. Now, in the old days where there was 20% of the electorate that was moderate and didn't make up their minds about things and were open-minded, this kind of thing, that might have been true. But in the Trump era, I think Trump looks better no matter who you contrast him with.
He looks better no matter who's there. He's gonna look better Kamala Harris, gonna look better Crazy Bernie, definitely gonna look better than Biden. And, by the way, somebody… It will come to me. Somebody… Oh! Brit Hume! Brit Hume actually voiced what the Washington Post and New York Times tried to say yesterday with their pieces that we talked about, "Is it time for Joe to get out?" Brit Hume said (paraphrased), "You know what? He's gone senile. Biden's gone senile." That's what everybody's trying to say that nobody will say, but Brit Hume did say.
You put Biden up on a stage with Trump and, folks, it's over. And this they know. They think there gonna be somebody with indefatigable energy like Fauxcahontas. Crazy Bernie can't. He won't… Crazy Bernie, do you understand…? He was asked a question at a town hall on health care. He doesn't even know what a health care deductible is. He's got this plan, Medicare for All. The government's gonna spend how many trillions to provide health care for everybody, and somebody stood up:
"Well, now, wait a minute now. I get 85% of my premium paid by my employer, and I like this deal, Mr. Sanders, Senator Sanders. I like that my employer pays 85% of my premium. I've got 15% that I pay, copay, this kind of thing," and Crazy Bernie said, "Well, what is your deductible and how often is it?" What? How often? Everybody knows that your deductible is annual figure. Whether it's $500, $50, whatever your deal is, it's an annual amount of money. He didn't even know that, and here's a guy devising a question.
This is my point. These people on the left have never been in the private sector. They've never run a business or had the pressures of meeting a payroll or having to put together benefit packages for their employees. They just sit up in their citadels and think they're smarter than everybody else and demand how it's gonna be done with their command-and-control central authority. He doesn't know what a deductible is and how it applies.
His constituent was trying to tell him that your plan is gonna cost me through the wazoo because now you're gonna raise my taxes to pay for health care for illegal immigrants, which is gonna be free. He said, "You don't understand what I'm talking about. But I need to know what your deductible is and how often it is," and the constituent was speechless. Then another guy stood up, a doctor. "Can I ask you a question Senator Sanders?"
(impression) "Of course. Of course. What is it?"
"Can you tell me, what are you gonna do to make sure that the really best and brightest go into the medical profession? What are you gonna do to make sure that your plan does not drive out the people who would be the best doctors and surgeons and oncologists?" And it's a great question. Because once the government starts paying them, once there is no difference between them and unions where you make what everybody else makes, unless you work overtime… Your talents are not rewarded. Your specific skills are not rewarded.
You just make what everybody else makes, and he doesn't have an answer for it. (impression) "Well, people will go into the profession. It's a… It's a… It's a very… buh, buh, buh." He just thinks it's gonna happen. These people think that the golden goose of capitalism is gonna survive no matter what they do. Even though they're actively trying to destroy it. So my point, Bernie Sanders doesn't even know what the impact of his plan is gonna be. He's just playing Santa Claus.
Now, in this context, Doug Schoen thinks that there's this group of moderates out there that whoever the Democrats nominate, the moderates can be brought into the fold and a truce can happen between the extreme leftists and so forth. His theory is that "[a] narrowed field will help to eliminate the noise and confusion that voters inevitably face when dealing with a large primary field." Now, the thing about this that's wrong — and I don't mean this as an insult to Doug Schoen. But large primary fields are normal!
The Republicans had one in 2016. It's only common sense that the nominee benefits when everybody else quits! There's nothing revolutionary about this. So what he's saying (without saying it) is that there's a bunch of Looney Tunes right now on the Democrat primary stage. And they're gonna be gone, and when they're gone, the candidates that remain are gonna be the reasonable centrist moderates and that that's gonna cause Trump trouble.
Well, it's a different world in the Democrat Party than it was in the nineties. I don't care how many of these Democrats leave, the one that's left standing is gonna be a Looney Tune, is going to be infested with Trump hatred, is going to be radical leftist. They all raise their hands when asked if illegal immigrants should get free health care. American citizens don't even get that, and they're not even proposing that. They're proposing that the middle class of America pay a tax increase to give free health care and other welfare benefits to illegal aliens. All of them are.
One of them, Andrew Yang, is promising to give everybody, what, $5,000 a year, claiming it's going to totally change and revolutionize their lives? They're all Looney Tunes, and I think it's the exact opposite. I think once they settle on somebody — no matter who it is in that field — it's better for Trump because then the focus is gonna be not on 16 or 20 of them, but on one radical leftist. Now, to Conrad Black who contrasts with Doug Schoen. "The Two Ticking Time Bombs of the Coming Election." We'll come back and continue with Conrad Black's theory on the Trump landslide after this.
RUSH: Now, Conrad Black, in contrast with Doug Schoen who thinks that big trouble is awaiting Trump once the Democrats get a nominee because that will be the end of the radicals. His theory is the exact opposite. There are two — and this is from his headline. There are "two ticking time bombs" waiting to go off after the primaries, right before the conventions, that are going to determine everything. It is the exact opposite of the Doug Schoen piece. Let me give you some pull quotes.
"Almost the whole political class, except the president and his inner circle … is somnambulating into an election that will be a fiery coruscation to all the outrages and enormities of the last three years. It is like an immense fireworks display, mounting inexorably to a tremendous climax of indictments and an electoral landslide. … There are two gigantic unrealities, time-bombs that will detonate in the four months to the beginning of the delegate-selection process for nominees of the major parties… The first is the gigantic eruption of the scandalous attempt to affect and undo the 2016 election.
"The second is the fact that when the public finally looks seriously at the Democratic candidates, the race will tilt like a teeter-totter when a 300-pound man sits at the opposite end to a child. Every candidate in serious contention for the Democratic nomination, except Joe Biden, has championed tax, immigration, health care, and environmental policies that the great majority of Americans will not seriously entertain — and that is without getting into reparations for descendants of slaves and natives, and legalized infanticide," which is abortion after the baby is born, which some Democrats are advocating now.
"And the one prominent Democratic contender who can claim comparative sanity and civility — Biden — lacks the acuity for the office he now seeks and always has," meaning he's not skilled. He doesn't have the acumen. He's not made for the presidency. Next pull quote: "But the stark contrast in policy and personality terms between the president and the Democrats, and the bellicosity of the president himself, which can be embarrassing but may have been essential for him to get through the unprecedented effort to undermine him illegally, do not in themselves explain the very long fuse that is burning with excruciating slowness toward the powder keg of explicit revelation of Democratic law-breaking."
He is saying here he thinks there are gonna be indictments of all of these people that ran the silent coup, and that they're gonna come down in plenty of time before the election to have an impact. He thinks that the illegalities that the Democrats, the DOJ and others have engaged in is going to shock the American people because they haven't been told about them in the mainstream or Drive-By Media. He also believes that no matter who the nominee is, the Democrat agenda is set, and he's right about that.
That's why I discount Doug Schoen's note that the moderates will somehow find a truce with the radicals. For that to happen, somebody's gonna have to go to every one of these nominees and say, "You've got to shut up. You gotta shut up about reparations. You gotta shut up about abortion. The ugh shut up about free health care for illegals. You gotta shut up about free health care for…" And they can't. So Black's opinion is this country is nowhere near accepting the agenda of the Democrat Party, but that nobody knows what the yet other than people watching Drive-By Media. So those are the two contrasts.
Which one do you think is more applicable?
RUSH: Now, the Conrad Black piece I referred to, there's much more to it. I just gave you the CliffsNotes summary version. But he gets into the media collusion that has taken place that he thinks is going to be exposed. Look, you and I know far more than your average Democrat. Do you know why? It's not about intelligence. They don't listen to this program in great numbers. Some of them do. We watch them. We pay attention to what they say. This program probably is more balanced than your average, ordinary newscast is.
I tell you exactly what liberals and Democrats are saying, what their plans are, how they intend to sell them, and I do that to contrast what I think and what conservatives think. So you people listening here are among the most informed in the country. But Conrad's right. People that read the New York Times, I guarantee you, they don't read anything else. That's all they know. They have no idea what really happens on a program like this. They have no idea what really happens on Fox News. All they know is the drivel and the misinformation that they are peppered with also from Facebook and Twitter, CNN, the Washington Post.
Conrad's theory is that at some point the media isn't going to be able to hide from their audiences, who the Democrats are, what they've become, the truth of the attempt to get rid of Trump which was baseless with no evidence. There was never any evidence of collusion, not a shred of it. It was all Hillary Clinton political opposition research, the Steele dossier. He is of the belief that there's still a sizable percentage of American voters that don't know any of this yet. And it's entirely possible. You and I sit there saying, "This can't be.
"There can be this many people who only know…" But don't doubt me on this. New York Times readers especially. That's it. As far as they're concerned, that's the bible, or in LA, the LA Times, or in San Francisco, the Chronicle. And the New York Times determines what's in those papers when it comes to national news. The New York Times determines what CNN covers. And then you've got, "Well, Rush nobody watches CNN. Their ratings…" Yeah, but they're on in the airports and so forth.
I mean, they're committing suicide financially and ratings-wise, but they're just doubling down on what's causing them to lose audience. They're not expanding, is the point. You and I don't watch CNN. You don't need to watch CNN to know what they think or talk about because you understand instinctively what Democrats have become, liberals and so forth. So the Conrad piece is much more detailed than just those two talking points. If he's right, then this is gonna be a slam dunk. If he's right. Let me tell you something, particularly about indictments.
The American people might coast along and think, "This collusion stuff is just politics-as-usual. It's just the two parties going after each other. Nothing to see here. Democrats tried; they failed. Republicans will try next time." If there are indictments… I was speaking about this with Victor Davis Hanson some days ago. If there are — and that's why so many people were disappointed that Comey's getting away scot-free. If there are indictments of the people that ran this coup — Strzok Smirk, Lisa Page — then that's it, folks. You can't hide an indictment.
That is an official charge of criminal behavior by the Department of Justice. That's not a political accusation made by one politician against another. And Conrad thinks there are going to be indictments. And if there are? Whew! Then he's going to be more right than he knows. So he is confident that the attorney general, William Barr's, investigator is gonna dig up… Well, folks. There are already indictable offenses. Hell, the charade they ran at the FISA court! Lying to the FISA court about evidence that they never had, to get warrants to spy.
Their efforts to plant embedded spies in the Trump campaign. There's clearly illegal, indictable actions that have taken place here. The real question is — whether it's Bill Barr or anybody else — will official Washington indict itself? Will the establishment actually indict? Conrad is confident that Barr will. We'll see. Here's… Back to the phones. As you know, I as program host, take many risks during the busy broadcast day, and they continue. It wouldn't be life without them.
RUSH: Grab audio sound bite number 12. This is Brit Hume last night with Chatsworth Osborne Jr. on the Fox News Channel.
HUME: The stuff you see with him more recently, for example —
RUSH: Wait a minute. Stop the tape! He was talking about Biden here. I just wanted you to here, if you can cue that back to the beginning. This is Brit Hume in his own words about Biden being overtaken by senility.
HUME: The stuff you see with him more recently, for example, not remembering that when he met with the students from Parkland High School that he wasn't still in office. He'd been out of office for more than a year when that happened! The fact that he misremembered that? That's not a gaffe. That's the kind of memory problems that people his age — and indeed my age — have all the time. And I think that the thing that may catch up with Biden over time — even among Democrats who would otherwise be for him — is the feeling that he's… that senility is overtaking him, and I think it is.
RUSH: Yeah. Let me… Look, he's just got the guts to say it. Do people descending into senility know it? (interruption) No, no. It's a legitimate question. I think some do during moments of lucidity, they know. But overall you don't want to admit that. As you age you want to take pride in avoiding all of the pitfalls of age you. You brag to people about it! "Yeah, yeah, I'm 77-year-olds and I can run a 5.8 40" or whatever the brag.
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